


Bonus: Black Pool

by wheel_pen



Series: Darkwood Eastport [30]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kid Fic, Magic, Polygamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-30
Updated: 2015-05-30
Packaged: 2018-04-02 01:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4041361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Black Pool clan travels to their new house in Atlanta and turns it into a home. A brief scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bonus: Black Pool

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe. I’ve given a lot of thought to the Darkwood culture, so if something seems confusing, feel free to ask. I hope you enjoy!

3410 Ridgewood. Damon repeated this address over and over in his head like a mantra as the bus rumbled along, trying to stay calm but alert, awake but not tense, despite the exhaustion he felt. Of course, he didn’t really _need_ to keep the address in mind; it wasn’t as if he was driving. Thank goodness; he wasn’t sure he could’ve handled that additional duty right now. But it gave him something positive to focus on, a goal; and it was something that was very important to him, to all of them—their new home.

Alaric sat in the seat across the aisle; he was not the sort to insist on chit-chat, for which Damon was glad. His wife Jenna was sitting more towards the middle of the bus, with Elena beside her; they’d been talking, quietly, almost the whole time since they’d cleared Customs in Charleston. Damon figured Elena ought to know everything there was to know about America by now.

He sat up a little straighter and gazed over the back of the seat, surveying the other passengers. He made eye contact with Stefan at the back, who was trying to keep Hugo and Sofia reasonably quiet and amused. The other man gave him a tired, faint smile and nodded in return. Across the aisle from Stefan, Bonnie was fast asleep; good for her. Damon felt bad for making this move when she was eight months pregnant, but honestly, _someone_ was likely to be uncomfortably pregnant whenever they did it, and Bonnie was at least good-natured about it.

Farther up the bus Caroline sat tensely, chewing her bottom lip and automatically interacting with Isadora and Dashiell. Of all of them, she would probably appreciate the riches of America the most, once she got settled into it; but she didn’t exactly embrace change and adventure whole-heartedly. Elena was the one who kept up the best spirits, handily managing Tobias, Anna, _and_ Omar. She turned briefly from Jenna and gave Damon a genuine smile, which he returned without thinking, suddenly glad that she was there to help him with the others.

“Little K, stop kicking the seat,” Katherine ordered, not for the first time, leading the little girl to whine and cry.

“Little K,” Damon repeated sternly, and she quieted but pouted with fierce determination. “Come here,” he invited in a warmer tone, figuring she was probably getting bored and fidgety after the long bus ride. Katherine was busy with two toddlers and an infant anyway, not to mention overseeing the other adults and children generally. “Come on.”

Little K slipped off the seat and wobbled down the aisle, unused to this mode of transportation, and climbed up into the empty space beside Damon. He lifted her onto his lap and turned so she could see out the window. “Look, this is America,” he told her. “Isn’t it pretty? Look at that building. Look, there’s a park.”

Behind them Damon heard Caroline make a noise of frustration. A familiar odor filled the air and Dashiell started to cry. “Stinky!” Isadora proclaimed loudly.

“Ugh, he sort of—leaked,” Caroline said when Damon glanced back at her.

He started to set Little K aside. “I’ll change him,” he offered.

“No, I’ve got it,” Caroline countered with a sigh.

“Isadora, come here,” Damon summoned instead, encouraging the toddler to join him and Little K. Caroline rose, awkwardly carrying Dashiell’s basket down the aisle towards the bathrooms. Bonnie started awake at the noise and sat up guiltily.

“I can take him,” she told Stefan, who tried to demur but eventually passed Hugo to her. A moment later Katherine sent Kai toddling down the aisle to Stefan’s side instead, readjusting the child-to-caregiver balance.

Damon scooted closer to the aisle, letting Little K and Isadora stare out the window. Isadora kept up a continuous stream of cheerful burble but Little K regarded the strange landscape with more wariness; they both took after their mothers in that sense, though Damon had no doubt that both women would conquer America in their own ways once they settled in.

“We’re driving over a _bridge_ , across a _river_ ,” Damon pointed out to the girls.

“There’s a river at home,” Little K remembered.

“America is our home now,” Damon corrected her, almost automatically.

They drove mostly _around_ Atlanta, viewing the gleaming silver skyscrapers only from a distance with the low-hanging sun glinting off them brightly; then the businesses and restaurants—fascinating to look at in themselves—gave way to homes of increasing size, with shady trees half-hiding them from view. People began to sit up, pack up, tense up as they neared their destination, anticipation running high. Damon couldn’t help but glance back at Stefan again; they’d driven this way several times, checking on the house to make sure the additions were progressing. The other man nodded and smiled slightly, as if he was thinking the same thing—the two of them had a slight advantage over the others, a sense of what to expect while the rest didn’t.

“This is it,” Damon announced loudly as the bus lumbered into a circle drive. The ladies strained to get a good view of the house out of the bus windows, murmuring to each other. Damon had a momentary stab of panic that they would be disappointed but he shoved it aside as best he could. The bus halted and Damon half-stood, one knee on the seat as he faced the rest of the bus. “We’re going to go straight into the house, into the main room,” he told them all, a repeat of his many preparation speeches. “We’ll summon the servants, and then we can do whatever we want. _Okay_?” he added a bit pointedly, as none of the ladies were looking at him.

“I’ll be glad to get off this bus,” Bonnie finally responded brightly. There was no need for them to gawk out the windows when they could just step outside to see the house.

Damon nodded to Alaric, who left his seat and exited the bus first. There wasn’t really a strict protocol of order so Damon decided to go next, taking Little K’s hand and pulling her behind him. His legs were slightly jellied after being on the bus for so long and standing on solid ground was momentarily disorienting. “Come on, Little K,” he encouraged, guiding her down the steps. He picked her up off the last one. “Look, there’s our new home.”

“It’s a castle!” she decided, with some excitement, and he smiled.

“That’s right, a castle for my princess,” he agreed, kissing her cheek.

A young woman in a business suit approached across the driveway. “Lord Black Pool,” she greeted, bowing.

He bowed back, as much as possible with the little girl in his arms. “Ms. Jackson. Thank you for being here.”

“Of course,” she assured him. “I had everything delivered today, and the door’s unlocked.” She offered him a set of keys with a smile.

He took them but couldn’t savor the moment as he had to concentrate on stopping Isadora from dashing past. He set Little K down and tried to help corral the children who were eager to escape the bus’s confinement, despite the instructions of the adults.

“Katherine, this is Kimsha Jackson,” he tried to introduce, “our assistant in Atlanta. She’s done a great deal to prepare the house for us.” His speech was ruined somewhat by being half bent over, Tobias trying to tug him in one direction and Isadora in the other.

“Lady Black Pool,” Kimsha addressed correctly as she bowed. He could tell Katherine was impressed.

“Alaric, could you—Thanks,” Damon said as the other man took custody of Tobias and Isadora so Damon could grab Kai and Anna. Alaric tended to err on the standoffish side when it came to other clans’ children; Jenna, feeling more comfortable, gladly carried Sofia off the bus so Elena could take Omar. “Uh, Ms. Jackson, could you wait here, we’ll be back out in just a few minutes,” Damon went on, sensing chaos was about to break out. “Let’s get everyone inside.”

The main door opened into a huge foyer, with two staircases curving down from the second floor. The massive windows let in what sunlight remained and the light fixture in the decorated ceiling—an alien-looking ball of individual bulbs on sticks—provided the rest of the glow, making the beige tiles shine under their feet. Most of them had seen nothing like this before, nothing so grand, and it succeeded in silencing their chatter. Still, Damon didn’t want to risk herding them to the living room. Instead he headed towards one of the staircases, encouraging Kai and Anna to sit on the steps.

“Okay, come over here, come on,” he directed. “Little K, come sit here. Tobias, come over here. Sit down. No, Kai, sit still.”

“Is there time to go to the bathroom?” Elena asked discreetly, and Damon hesitated just long enough that she took it back. “It’s okay, I can wait.”

“This’ll only take a minute,” he promised, envisioning the difficulty of keeping all the children in place even for a few minutes’ delay.

Stefan entered last, toting Hugo on his arm and Katell in her basket, and Damon nodded at Alaric, who withdrew back to the driveway with Jenna, shutting the doors behind them. This next moment was only for the Black Pool clan.

Damon just hoped it worked.

“Okay, quiet down,” he instructed. His voice echoed slightly in the cavernous room, along with the children’s shrill giggles and shrieks. “Okay, this is _very important_.” He’d explained this before and the reiteration was mostly an attempt to calm the children down. “I want you to close your eyes. Go on, close them.” This wasn’t really necessary and most of the adults didn’t follow his direction, or at least not for long; they needed to keep watch on the children, most of whom _were_ dutifully obeying Damon.

“This is our new home,” Damon continued. “Imagine living here. What will your room look like? Imagine playing outside here, having birthday parties and Christmas here. Imagine running all around the room, shouting,” he added dryly, figuring that was close in the children’s minds. He glanced back up at the ladies. “Imagine decorating your bedroom and nursery. Imagine having baby showers and barbecues, and decorating for the holidays, and planting a garden. Think of this place as our home.” Because after all, it was.

For a moment he wasn’t sure if it had worked. There wasn’t some magic phrase that could be rattled off; it had to come from the power of the people present, their emotions transforming the structure from a beautiful but empty house into a warm and loving home. He saw the adults closing their eyes, or their gazes going unfocused as they thought about what he’d suggested, and he couldn’t help doing the same.

Katherine would have the largest Christmas tree she could find stuffed into this foyer come Thanksgiving, determined to outshine every other home in the neighborhood. Elena would start a flower garden all around the house, while Bonnie would cultivate one for herbs near the kitchen doorway. Caroline—well, Caroline would lounge by the pool out back, sipping a fruity drink and wearing one of two dozen pairs of thousand-dollar sunglasses, and she’d look d—n good doing it. You couldn’t really do _that_ in the Valley—the swimming pools were too busy. And he and Stefan were going to have a man-cave. He wasn’t really certain what that was, except it involved a lot of electronics and comfortable seating, and it was a very American thing to have—

“Good afternoon, Lord Black Pool,” intoned a new yet somehow familiar voice, and Damon’s eyes fluttered open to see a servant standing before him in a bow, his appearance and uniform almost exactly what they were used to in the Valley. He narrowly avoided sighing with relief.

The servant turned to greet Katherine, then the oldest child. “Good afternoon, Little K.”

“He knows my name!” she squealed with delight.

“Of course,” Damon told her, leaning over to kiss the top of her head. “Go on, get up, look around. Go on.”

“Are we done? Thank G-d,” Caroline sighed tactlessly.

“I’m just going to—Where’s a bathroom?” Elena asked a female servant, who handily removed Omar from her.

“May I take them, sir?” another servant asked Stefan, relieving him of the children he carried.

Damon shooed everyone away from the hall, encouraging them to explore the house and grounds, or at least quit complaining. Everyone but Katherine, that is, and he couldn’t restrain himself from hugging her. Everyone was finally safe and protected after their long journey; he didn’t have to worry about every single thing anymore. The relief almost made him light-headed.

Though he couldn’t forget that he still had duties to perform.

“Standard health and maintenance of the house and grounds,” he told a servant, who nodded obediently. Supposedly they knew this already but repetition wouldn’t hurt. “Bring our luggage in from the bus, start putting things away, talk to Lord Alaric’s servant—and invite Lord Alaric and Ms. Jackson in.”

“Wait, I need to touch up my makeup,” Katherine insisted, halting the servant. “My hair’s a mess, I should change—“

“They won’t be staying long,” Damon countermanded. Katherine gave him a look but immediately flipped on a charming smile as their guests entered.

“This house is _so_ beautiful,” Jenna enthused. “The stone just glows.”

“You had to do a lot of remodeling, didn’t you?” Alaric asked.

“Ms. Jackson took care of that for us,” Damon inserted smoothly, drawing the young woman into the conversation.

“Thank you so much for all your help,” Katherine told her with appropriate grace. “I know you’ve done a great deal to prepare the house for us.”

“Thank you,” Kimsha replied in turn, genuinely pleased. “I hope I’ve left you with everything you need for right now. If you need anything else, I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

“Eight o’clock, right?” Damon remembered. At one point setting the meeting for so early in the day had seemed like a good idea. Not so much right now.


End file.
